Newt suspends, and Romney sounds Presidential

View 721 Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Newt Gingrich, who always began his debate speeches by saying that anyone on the platform of Republican candidates for nomination as President would be preferable to the incumbent, has formally withdrawn from the race. Well, not quite formally withdrawn, and of course he will only “suspend” his campaign, but that’s a complication of the campaign funding laws: all the candidates who don’t win generally end up with debts, and they have to have a mechanism for trying to raise money to pay that off. It’s the toughest form of fund raising to begin with and the laws make it worse if you’re not formally running for office even if you’re really out of the game and just want to go home.

Gingrich will now go make whatever peace he can with Mr. Romney, who will be as gracious as his temperament permits. It’s unlikely that he will offer Gingrich anything important, but for that matter Newt is unlikely to ask for anything. It would be valuable for the republic if Romney were to listen to Gingrich on matters of foreign and domestic policy, and he may be smart enough to know that. Romney is not quite the typical country club establishment republican. His speech last night was quite Presidential:

Four years ago Barack Obama dazzled us in front of Greek columns with sweeping promises of hope and change. But after we came down to earth, after the celebration and parades, what do we have to show for three and a half years of President Obama?

Is it easier to make ends meet? Is it easier to sell your home or buy a new one? Have you saved what you needed for retirement? Are you making more in your job? Do you have a better chance to get a better job? Do you pay less at the pump?

If the answer were “yes” to those questions, then President Obama would be running for re-election based on his achievements…and rightly so. But because he has failed, he will run a campaign of diversions, distractions, and distortions. That kind of campaign may have worked at another place and in a different time. But not here and not now. It’s still about the economy …and we’re not stupid.

People are hurting in America. And we know that something is wrong, terribly wrong with the direction of the country.

We know that this election is about the kind of America we will live in and the kind of America we will leave to future generations. When it comes to the character of America, President Obama and I have very different visions.

Government is at the center of his vision. It dispenses the benefits, borrows what it cannot take, and consumes a greater and greater share of the economy. With Obamacare fully installed, government will come to control half the economy, and we will have effectively ceased to be a free enterprise society.

There is considerably more in that vein , and even Rush Limbaugh approved it as conservative and perhaps the best Romney has made yet.

This election is crucial to the survival of the republic. It is a lot easier for conservatives to influence a Republican president, House, and Senate, than it is to have any say at all when those bodies are controlled by the current crop of Democrats.

And it will be a lot easier to take back our government from Republicans than from the current Democratic Party, which has pretty well become the party of ever-growing government. And yes, I understand that it was the post-Gingrich Republicans who endorsed “big government conservatism” as if such a humbug could exist; but their efforts were redoubled in spades and big casino after the election of 2006. Some of them learned a lesson from that. We may not be able to restore the republic with Romney as President and a Republican House and Senate. We certainly will not be able to do so under a reelected triumphant President Obama.

The President is concerned about the average $25,000 owed by each graduating student. Given that half of them will find their undergraduate education nearly worthless, this is a matter of considerable concern, but compare it to other numbers. Every taxpayer – and presumably those students will become taxpayers – inherits a debt of more than $100,000. If the student becomes a citizen but not a taxpayer, that student will still owe about $50,000 as a share of the national debt. Add that to the personal debt of $25,000 in student loans. The President doesn’t seem so much concerned about those debts.

I managed to write that paragraph without using the ancient English practice of assuming that the masculine is the generic pronoun, but it took a bit of thought and rewording. Damon Knight tried to get yeye accepted as the generic non-sexist pronoun, which may be a comment on Damon’s view of the feminist outrage on the subject, or may simply be whimsical. Of course yeye brings about a break in the flow of thought, she or he is simply awkward, the masculine pronoun is ignored and lets the reader get on with the subject for about 90% of the readers (a guess, of course), but the one offended by the practice are so offended that one seeks to avoid their attention. Ah well. It’s merely an aside. Sometimes I am tempted to use Damon’s yeye and be done with it.

It turns out that the coming rise in student loan interest rates is a time bomb deliberately inserted into the law nationalizing the student loan business: the rate was set at double what is being collected, with a temporary cut set to expire in the summer of an election year. One may make as much of that as one wants to. Bonaparte said one should no ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence, but this seems more a deliberate act of will. Whether that’s incompetent or malice I leave as an exercise for the reader. It was done in 2007 by a Democratic congress, and was certainly deliberate by the Democratic leadership. Then Senator Obama was not present when the bill came up for a vote, so his opinion on the subject is not recorded. He is at present in favor of extending the interest cut. So, I suspect, is everyone else.